Category: Daily Journal

Probably wouldn’t have seen it alive if they hadn’t cleared out all the dead stuff. Totally forgot I stuck that extra seed in there.

Kinda like back in July when I went to bring the llama water and found this:

Screaming, dehydrated, hungry as hell and bizarrely alone in the middle of our bullpen, which very thankfully was not occupied by our bull at the time.

Best guess is Diggity was the three week old kitten of the cat that had disappeared from a neighbouring property six weeks previously. But who the hell knows. Weird things happen on the farm.

Kinda like when my cat Andy snuck outside for an adventure and this shot out of the grape plant when I called “here kitty kitty” last year around this time.

How or why she wound up here no idea, but once she got here the resident farm cat made eradicating her a top priority, so Ning decided she’d explore the option of late kitten-hood adoption and gave me her frantic elevator pitch. She at least we know absolutely is the progeny of the aforementioned neighbouring cat, so it’s likely we’ve got a pair of sisters on our hands.

My life would be a lot easier if I were a less easy mark for fuzzy things with big eyes.

Still have a bit of catching up to get caught up with, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I have learned the art of delegation.

That laundry basket is older than I am. Some of my earliest memories are of playing in that basket. Carrying cats around in it. Even using it for it’s actual given purpose eventually.

I was cleaning out my mother’s apartment after she passed. I filled the basket with clothes from the hall closet, took them to the bedroom to pack, and set the basket down on the bed. Right next to an identical basket. I stared in amazement. Somehow I had managed to live well into my thirties, and had even just spent a full week using both of them to sort through that small apartment, without ever realizing that there were two of them.

One of my favorite mysteries of my mind. Not terribly compelling, just terrifically baffling.

Here is a picture of our kitten Diggity for reasons I consider to be self evident.

Ning surprised me at the breakfast table with a dish she had prepared. It was swiftly relocated to the boot room.

I love you too, sweetheart. But no thank you.

And the rest of the day is being spent in a fit of domestic mayhem wherein I atone for the sin of deliberately letting everything go to hell for a few days. One by one I am discovering all of my daughter’s sticker stack Toynbee tiles along the way.

Up with the alarm, breakfast down our throats and out the door for an appointment in town. Town is an hour away and also contains some of our favourite people, one of which we acquired on arrival, so we were gone most of the day. Our chickens were not impressed.

They are blessed with a very dedicated farmer, however. I was still wrangling grocery bags while she was already filling her pail with scratch for them, so their deprivation was at least met with swift relief when we did get home.

Meanwhile the smart one was scoring choice kitchen scraps and worms in the compost. They really need to learn to follow her when she gets quiet.

She’s done magnificently in absolutely horrible soil, especially after competing with aggressive thistle for half the summer while I nurtured our primary crops. She’s also survived at least a couple crazy hard frosts. If I manage to get seeds from her they’re definitely going in the ground next year.

Everything smells as golden as it looks. A summer spent with a blank slate sky and lungs filled with smoke truly makes a person fall in love with fresh air all over again.

llandscape with llama

Today my sweetheart came in for pets. She’s something of the administrative heart of the herd, and can reliably be found knee deep in calves on nursery duty. Her name is Lady.

Lady

His name is currently Asshole, and if he doesn’t smarten up his middle name’s going to be Served with Fresh Bread and Choice of Salad

My mother grew up poor. Would not have survived without wild food sources poor. Rose hips were her candy. They grow everywhere on the property. She would be happy to see her grandchild here.

(Speaking of grandmothers, Demona gave me a great photo op of her new calf when she came in for grain today. I do believe we have a young bull, and that’s his grandmother Betty in the foreground:

Betty and Demona are as bonded as two living creatures can be. I’m glad we’re able to keep them together here. Demona is showing every evidence of being every bit the devoted mother Betty is, and they’re both lovely girls.)

My child is supposed to be sleeping. She is mooing. Our bull Genghis is outside hollering his head off, and she always answers him. It’s nice that she can hear him. The sun has returned and the windows are open. A very welcome reprieve before our full winter confinement.

I spent the cold, wet day yesterday listening to the constant hum of trilling swans gathering in the area. By evening they had come to whatever agreements were necessary and passed overhead on their way south.

It’s always a melancholy time when we say goodbye to all the creatures who join us up here for the summer, but so much beauty still remains.

If you are a dog, you are a dog, and no amount of trying not to be a dog will make you anything but a dog. If you go to a party where not all the guests like dogs, and you try to dress like those guests to compensate, you’re just going to be a more obvious dog.

Nobody likes dogs better when they try not to be dogs. It just makes being a dog less fun.